Silently, like ghosts, two more Egyptian palace guards melted out from the shadows behind pillars and bowed first to her, then to him. Selene just stared. Palace guards? Had they been following her this whole time? How long—?
“If you will, Shushu,” Khenti said to one of them, still in Egyptian, “inform Kemse that the young queen is safe and sound.” Khenti’s gaze returned to Selene. “And that she’s looking forward to returning the shawl she stole. She’s quite sorry for the trouble she’s caused this morning.”
Selene smiled politely, the best she could manage in her shock. The other guards bowed once more to the two of them before they filed out in silence.
“So you’ve been busy,” Khenti said quietly, returning to addressing her in Greek.
Selene shrugged. What business was it of his?
“The world is an unfriendly place,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out alone.”
Selene considered a few curses before settling on the proper thing to say. “I wasn’t alone,” she said, eyes flicking to where the guards had departed.
Khenti’s frown broke into a hint of a smile. “That’s true,” he said. “Still, in the future, it would make our lives much easier if Your Majesty would follow directions, impressed though we are by your obvious ingenuity. One of the supply ferries?”
“Of course,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing to have done. How did he know that?
“Clever,” he said. “But, please, no more. I’ll ask Lord Horus to give you and your brothers more liberty. Just please don’t sneak off, my lady. There are too many people who want you dead.”
Dead? “Why would anyone want—”
“Dead, Selene,” he repeated. “It seems the world is coming—the war is coming—whether we’re ready or not. Perhaps it’s time you understood that.”
Before she could reply, Khenti had stepped forward and was reaching past her to knock on the door.
16
THE STORM OF WAR
ACTIUM, 31 BCE
Dawn on the day of the attack had brought dark clouds, a bad omen made worse when they began to burn the ships whose rowers were either dead in the burial pits or had defected across the lines. Watching the thick black plumes of smoke rising to meet the storm-promising sky, Vorenus had felt a sorrowful resignation to death that had surprised him. Death didn’t frighten him overmuch—he had done his due diligence to honor the gods, even on this gods-doomed day—but he was accustomed to feeling a kind of bloodlust take over his mind when battle approached. It was something he and Pullo, even when they were young and thought themselves rivals, always knew they had in common.
But not today.
Perhaps he was just getting old. Or perhaps he was too close to the truth to convince himself that they stood any chance of victory. Whatever the cause, he’d been certain as he’d watched the sun rise that it was the last dawn he’d see.
Though he had lived to see noon, nothing in the half-day of slaughter had yet convinced him that anything but death awaited him today.
Keeping his stance wide on the salt-slick, heaving deck of Antony’s flagship, Vorenus peered north through the sheeting rain, trying to ascertain the status of Octavian’s vessels. There were close to a thousand ships on the water today. The numbers were on Octavian’s side, though not by much. And his fleet was mostly biremes and triremes, smaller ships than their own flotilla of four hundred or so heavy quad- and quinqueremes. The size difference was substantiaclass="underline" it would take little more than a single strike from the triple-beaked bronze ram at the head of one of their massive ships to sink a trireme. The even smaller biremes would likely be blown into splinters.
If only they could catch them.
Octavian, as he had on land, was refusing to give fight. He’d begun the morning far off from the shoreline, not moving in for the battle. Then, when at last Antony gave the frustrated order around noon to head forward into the storm, into Octavian’s lines, Caesar’s adopted son had given way, backrowing out of reach of their wave-plowing rams.
Not out of reach of each side’s ranged weapons, though: the blood of the day so far—and there had been much of it—had been wrought through the air. Archers’ volleys that pinned men to the decks and made pincushions of their side-curved shields. Great iron bolts shot across the waters that could cut through two men at a time. Skull-size stones launched from deck-mounted ballistae that could blow men to pieces. Greased firepots of oil that made a mockery of the rain, vaulting through the air to explode on the decks in infernal heat. Even now Vorenus could see, like parodies of lighthouses on the water, ships burning on both sides—though there were more among their own lines. Bigger ships made for bigger targets. It was astonishing luck that the flagship had suffered only minor burns about the deck.
Though Antony had for a time paced about the ship, raving about cowardice and dishonor, Octavian’s tactic was clear and sensible: he was going to let Antony’s men row and row until they were to the point of exhaustion or death before he attacked. The rowers were the heart of the ship, after all. Indeed, on clear days, with their rhythm beating steady and sure, Vorenus had often closed his eyes and imagined himself standing atop the hollow heart of a great giant swimming in the sea. But weakened by disease and hunger, sick from the pitching waves, and forced to row harder and longer than they were meant to, the rowers at the heart of these giants were fading fast. Vorenus could see it in the increasingly erratic lift and stroke of their long oars, and he could feel it in the chaotic shouts that echoed up from belowdecks. Octavian, he was certain, was seeing it, too. They wouldn’t have long to wait now.
He looked over to his right, where Pullo was standing tall and unfazed by the weather or the arrow that had managed to pierce his shield far enough to rip into his bracing shoulder. He was kicking his feet to snap the shafts of other arrows that had landed around him, trying to keep his balance as the storm-stirred seas pitched against the massive vessel. Over the past few hours they’d found that the hundreds, if not thousands, of iron points embedded in the deck made for a useful addition in the wet, shifting conditions: their shaftless necks were welcome points of traction and grip when one’s feet were inclined to slide out along the wood.
On the other hand, Vorenus had noted more than once, they were also hell on one’s knees when fresh volleys came down and the legionnaires hunkered beneath their large rectangular shields.
“They still backing off?” Pullo asked, voice betraying only moderate interest.
Vorenus nodded. Their thinning squadron of archers still alive on deck fitted arrows and launched a fresh salvo up into the gray sky. Red shields flipped up and overlapped into traditional tortoise formation on the deck of one of Octavian’s smaller ships nearby, and Vorenus saw a few of the shields cave away as arrows slipped through the gaps and found targets. Never enough, though. It was only a matter of time. He could only hope that Cleopatra would do the right thing when that time came. He’d managed only a few moments to talk with her in private after the generals had met during the night, and she’d seemed none too eager to hear his advice, but perhaps something of what he’d said had sunk in. There was no way of knowing now, and not for the first time he wondered if they should have stayed with Cleopatra instead of Antony. But, then, it was one betrayal to speak against his commander and quite another to act against him. Let Cleopatra do what she would now. He would stand and die where duty called.
“Some hits?” Pullo’s eyes weren’t what they once were. Another sign that they were both too damn old for the young men’s business of battle.